Gen 2 Snorlax ought to be nixed. No, I'm serious.

This is the kind of topic that gets brought up often. I apologize for bringing it up for the 928751908427th time, but there's a good reason it gets as much discussion as it does: Snorlax is broken as hell. Hopefully I'm a credible enough GSCer for this to get attention and not just be shoved aside.

I used to support Snorlax's existence in GSC because, hey, "good players" know how to deal with it, and it seems to enable offense in a generation generally derided for being "all stall". But the more I think of it, the more bullshit that seems. Snorlax doesn't just enable offense, it instantly wrests control of matches. It forces you to play passively against it, so even if it doesn't outright get the advantage, at worst it forces drawish situations. AT WORST. Most mons at least have some bad matchups, but Snorlax literally can manhandle anything GSC can throw at it. The metagame is so centered around Snorlax that it's ridiculous; that people regularly run 2 checks to it and still get their faces smashed by it, that Growl Miltank is the standard mostly to stall out Fire Blast Curselax, that Explosion is the only "reliable" way to get counterplay against Lax should all be pretty good evidence of that, and of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. The way it limits the moves you can make is criminal, and it's severely detrimental to the accessibility of GSC.

Of course, Snorlax does define offense in GSC, which might seem like a good thing. But it's not just because he's one of the few things that can tank enough hits to set up. It's also because of what he does to mess up most other offensive Pokemon. Most defensive Pokemon are forced out by something, but not Lax once he gets in. He just pressures the opponent into switching in something like Skarm that does little more than not die to Lax. Honestly, without Snorlax, teams lose their Check to Everything and battles are probably more likely to become more dynamic than they are to become more stallish, in all honesty. One of the main reasons people consider using stall tactics, after all, is because, as aforementioned, there's really no other way to reliably deal with Snorlax but to stall it. Granted, the Drum set prevents people from trying to get TOO stally, but that gets into another aspect of GSC: there's literally no reason not to use Snorlax, and that stifles creativity way too much (outside of using wacky new sets for SNORLAX, or using a new Special Sweeper like Vaporeon that can beat SNORLAX... sometimes).

I don't have time to make an even more elaborate post right now, but suffice to say that I no longer believe Snorlax's super-centralizing influence on GSC is acceptable. It just makes teambuilding, playing, everything so... dumb. Now, with Snorlax gone, what would happen to the metagame? Would Electrics rule the day? Would it become more geared toward stall? Those are possibilities, but the likelihood and severity of those possibilities is probably trumped up and colored by a desire to rationalize the tendency to be conservative when it comes to making old-gen tier changes (which I normally favor, by-the-by). I implore people who know GSC, though, to try to look past that conservatism in this case and evaluate whether or not a Snorlax ban would actually be a good idea.

Well I think the biggest issue is: do we have enough players actually interested to play a possible suspect meta?
I mean, we managed to do an Adv Suspect few years ago because the gen would be revived for the new Tour format, but GSC is basically played once every year for SPL. Or are we just making a council and decide Lax fate or something like that?_?

It forces you to play passively against it, so even if it doesn't outright get the advantage, at worst it forces drawish situations. AT WORST. Most mons at least have some bad matchups, but Snorlax literally can manhandle anything GSC can throw at it.

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Snorlax does have a couple of bad matchups. Machamp and to a lesser extent Marowak and (particularly Reversal) Heracross do have the raw power to break its face in.

Not that having OU checks is a guarantee of balance, obviously, but it's at the very least not as obviously Uber as the above superlative rhetoric implies (about the only thing I can think of that does live up to that description is RBY Mewtwo).

I pretty much agree with everything Jorgen said. There always seems to be an elephant in the room for every gen (rby had wrap and Tauros, rse had Celebi, dpp had stealth rock, bw has weather and gsc has Snorlax).

Before a relatively poor counter argument is made along the lines of 'if you ban Snorlax then you have nothing to keep Zapdos [or insert whatever the fuck you want here] in check', please take a look at this reply from this topic. It is a debate about stealth rock and how stealth rock supposedly keeps things like Volcarona, Dragonite etc. in check:

Stealth Rocks have always aided Pokemon in sweeping past defensive threats more than they have aided Pokemon in checking offensive threats. This much has always been true, and you'll realize how true it is when nearly every offensive Pokemon analysis mentions "can 2HKO X with Stealth Rock" but hardly any defensive Pokemon analysis does. So why is it that people fail to recognize that if / when Stealth Rocks would be removed, we wouldn't be hurting our list of ways to counter certain Pokemon like Dragonite / Volcarona. We'd be ENHANCING it.

Additional Pokemon that would counter Volcarona outright if SR didn't exist: Moltres / Aerodactyl / Gyarados
Pokemon that Dragonite would be unable to break, even with its amazing Choice Band set, if SR didn't exist: SKARMORY (Fire Punch only 2HKOs if you're Adamant, and only has a 12% chance to do so without Stealth Rock) / Cloyster / Cresselia / Gliscor (assuming Poison Heal is up)

I could go on but you get my point. Banning Stealth rocks ADDS counters to these Pokemon's list, it doesn't remove them, and the Pokemon that used to counter them STILL DO. This goes the same for every super threatening sweeper in OU that is weak to Stealth Rocks. Stealth Rocks have never helped to "Counter" these Pokemon. What they have done is increased the number of potential CHECKS, but they have always been checks at best - you cannot rely on them at all and more often than not these Pokemon will sweep through your checks even if Stealth Rocks are on the field.

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A somewhat off-topic note, I think this perhaps highlights another problem when it comes to suspect testing and whatnot because I have been bitching about Snorlax in gsc for years amongst other things but I always got ridiculed to the max and I remember topics even getting deleted while they were well constructed and provided plenty of solid reasoning, a lot was even backed up by statistics. I remember bitching about stealth rock's dominance multiple times in the relative early days of dpp but now there are multiplethreads that seem to hint towards things I (and many others) have been saying all along. Isn't it time for Smogon as a whole to get off their high horse and actually start listening to people instead of only replying to 'known people' or people who just happen to post more than others? This doesn't mean that we should allow shitty topics like 'scizor to 00ber, discuss' but anywhere inbetween this and the way it is now would be fine (the way it is now being that you are ignored and ridiculed unless you are a quadruple back to back smogon tour winner across at least 3 generations and have 20 badges under your username and may or may not have had intercourse with staff)

hey you know what's a great comparison to gsc snorlax? genesect. both extremely versatile and strong as fuck, except one got banned in a heartbeat and the other's still ou. genesect also has checks and counters; one particularly hard counter, heatran, is something genesect can't break through at all unless it runs the stupidly bad hp ground (limits its coverage a lot). it really centralized the bw2 ou metagame. snorlax, on the other hand, can still break through its checks without running a subpar move. fb pops skarm/lix, drum breaks tank, lk sleeps random shit, d-edge 3hkos champ easily and bslam can para which leaves champ way open for retaliation. one of the best lax checks is lax itself, going to show just how great the thing is. i'm not saying i necessarily think lax should be banned, as it's been a key part of the gsc metagame for like a decade now, but by the standards i've witnessed for banning something in bw ou, snorlax goes above and beyond the requirements to be tossed into ubers.

I'm not sure if comparing anything in GSC to BW2 is a fair comparison. Not only are the metagames (obviously) entirely different, but Genesect heavily contributed to offensive teams and offensive pressure in a metagame that was already all offense. There is miles less offense in GSC than BW2, and the type of offense in GSC isn't the same kind either. Snorlax isn't sitting at a 99 speed tier or anything like that, very little in GSC really is comparable. It's not like Snorlax breaks an already dominant style or anything.

I never really like the idea as a whole of going back to tiers years later and changing them. Despite how dumb BP is in Gen III, I hated how BP went and got suspected way later, as well as the Smogon Tour Ingrain ban. It's just dumb stuff like that trying to change a metagame into something that it wasn't. Snorlax might be one of the most incredibly dominating forces ever, but GSC ended over a decade ago. Let people play the tier for the nostalgia and such and leave it at that. Why split an already microscopic community even further over "true/retro GSC" (w/ Snorlax) and "new GSC" (w/o Snorlax) anyways?

Edit: Yeah @Lavos I really didn't word the first half of this post regarding your points too well I guess. I need to not suck at saying things.

- i don't think bw2 and gsc are fair comparisons either but i'm making a slightly exaggerated yet valid point
- genesect and lax are not the same thing but they share similar qualities
- i think lax is broken by contemporary definition
- i don't want lax banned for the exact reasons you listed

nidokings more busted than snorlax in the this is busted regard (i fucking hate switching into nidoking)

neither are close to busted though, its funny how much gsc lax reminds me of bw uu lax, yeah its destructive and almost required on every team (is required!), but it does so much good for the meta as well. i also don't think it's as unstoppable as you say, even with my lack of "gsc knowledge", machamp, skarmory, cursettar, meanlook gengar, etc can all handle different sets and then you can throw in wearing it down with special attacks or the fact that we have a ton of cursers in general or that its slow and will be worn down by shit like marowark, etc.

i wish i could post more but i just dont think this is close to a problem for gsc

machamp can't safely switch into lax, especially double-edge variants. it takes a boatload from any stab move from lax. skarmory is obviously popped by fire blast, and lk + drum can sleep it and then pose an immediate threat the next turn. curse ttar is cute but it's 3hkod by lax eq and if lax drums as it curses that's a big problem. gengar can always boom but it doesn't ohko, mean look only works on monoattacking lax, even curselax with fb can beat gengar 1v1. i don't disagree with kd24 at all, i'm just clearing things up.

the main issue with lax is that nothing is a true counter to it. you have to run multiple different checks to different lax sets, and even then you're likely to be weak to something (teams that try to check curselax a lot end up being weak to drumlax and vice versa). there's nothing that switches into lax feeling 100% safe until you've scouted its full set, and then you still have to have the right pokemon to feel ok against it. in my experience with suspect rounds in bw, anything like gsc lax that has 0-1 true counters is inevitably banned. of course this isn't bw, so there's that. nidoking has cool coverage, sure, but it lacks brute force and some common stuff like zapdos can usually check it pretty well. it's a threat but outclassed by lax for sure. there's really no one arguing that lax isn't the best pokemon in gsc (and please nobody say ttar was the best in adv and we didn't ban it, adv ttar is nowhere near gsc lax).

all that said, i still don't think we should ban snorlax. on paper it's impossible to handle, but everyone handles it one way or another, and despite the fact that it's on 99.9% of competitive gsc teams it's not like every game is decided by whose lax dies first. hell, stuff like curselax hardly ever sweeps anymore (granted that's because it's overprepared for, but there you have it). the metagame has been set in stone for a very long time, changing it now is unnecessary and further divides what's left of the gsc community. talk about banning lax has been raised time and time again; maybe it's still ou now because people really don't want to see it go.

Tauros isn't broken. It's the best at what it does (converting a tempo advantage into a material one) but it has very little defensive utility since it can't explode (unlike Lax), relies on Hyper Beam risktaking to beat half the meta, and sucks if it's paralysed.

Tauros is great, but it's not something that should always be on every team - unlike RBY Snorlax let alone GSC Snorlax.

(Proof: I laddered to #1 on PO - and, in fact, #1 by over 100 rating points - without using Tauros; my team was Starmie/Exeggutor/Chansey/Snorlax/Rhydon/Slowbro, with Slowbro occasionally swapped out for Zapdos.)

Anyway, this thread isn't about RBY so I'll shut up now. But don't use wrong notions about RBY to support your arguments.

I remember the last thread. Just checked it and the vote for being OK with him handily crushed the other two choices.

But anyways...

If it's not running Curse, it's not unbeatable. If it is running Curse, then it's walled to hell and back by Skarmory or, after you know what it's second move is, whatever resists it. The first set on the analysis even has Sleep Talk as the first slash...

Lavos Spawn puts it eloquently why Snorlax should stay. The one point I want reiterate is this: although Snorlax is a terrible centralizing force in GSC, it has a positive influence to the metagame. By eliminating Snorlax, we would lose our best offensive answer to Raikou / Zapdos, and would force people to use Raikou / Blissey on their teams to prevent these Electric types from running over them. Maybe we may unban Celebi just to check these two Electric types or simply ban Raikou / Zapdos, too. The resulting tumult caused by Snorlax's banishment is not particularly beneficial for the GSC metagame, imo. Snorlax serves as a balancing force, a Sun that keeps all of GSC in orbit without colliding to each other.

Another strong point by Lavos - Snorlax may seem uncounterable on paper, but in actual play it is dealt without stretching your team too thin. Having 2 (or some additional soft) checks to Snorlax may be a lot, but in a gen where only 20-30 Pokemon are OU and majority of BL / UU are unviable you can afford this, unlike in BW2.

Although, Snorlax is more analogous to Chansey in RBY than Genesect in BW2 - they are both extremely centralizing forces in their respective generation, and a team is almost better with their inclusion, but they are not broken and have a balancing effect on the metagame.

Also THIS:

fat cookie said:

i'd love to keep the awful gen 4/5 culture of banning everything strong out of the old gens.

I'm in agreement with cookie.
No matter how dominating Snorlax is, Older Gen meta's arent meant to be updated. Ingrain Smeargle being banned was complete bs in my opinion, and it just goes to take away from the appeal of the gen

i'm no great gscer but i do play it occasionally cause it's fun and i really don't think lax is that much of a problem. best mon? sure, no doubt. centralizing? of course. broken (i.e. something that's so threatening that it lets worse players beat better ones)? idk.

of course my esteemed opinion on all things gsc doesn't mean much, if anything, so i'll let the actual gsc players argue about why lax is(n't) broken. however, i'd like to throw out the idea of a snorlax-less gsc mini-tour. it's nothing huge, it could be fun, we get to see what the meta'd be like, so why not?

somewhat related: would electrics really be that much of an issue without lax? i wouldn't imagine so... but then again what do i know

edit @ HUARGH: regarding adv's elephants in the room, in the past it may've been celebi (banned from stour for a while etc) but nowadays i know some of the top adv players would want dugtrio/tyranitar looked at instead.

Before I make any points I'd like to say I have no swing on this- my experience of GSC is decent but comparitively limited. I'm posting because I think theres a lot of people viewing this irrationally.

Firstly, the whole "don't change older gens" idealogy seems to have little reasoned backing. No-one who actually regularly plays the tier (i.e the people it affects most) will be playing for nostalgia, I can guarantee that, and so far the only other reason thats been presented for keeping lax is that it isn't a bad influence on the meta- however the whole point of this thread, from my perspective, is to be debating this, not "poo-pooing" anything said otherwise. So far the only point of Jorgens anyone has even bothered contesting is that using 2 mons to check it is (or is not) ridiculous. Every other post has either missed the point or not even made one. I am not suggesting people are necessarily wrong in their own opinions, but you need to actually read what he is saying and debate against it. No one has argued, for example, against how lax limits the moves you can make. Or how he radically limits teambuilding in that at least half of your team centres around a "lax metagame". Or how he may actually be "the face of offense" because he simply forces the opponent to throw defensive mons at it. Lavos' posts were well reasoned but they don't really contest against the points that Jorgen brought up in that lax immediately takes control of the game.

The second thing I'd like to bring up is that Jorgen knows GSC better than any of us- unless my interpetation of things is wrong, the only person who I can think of who would perhaps have more relevant opinion is borat, but either way, that irrelevant. I think the very fact that Jorgen has held the common opinion that lax is fine where it is for a long time and now, perhaps out of the blue, perhaps not, has come to a different conclusion, is worth investigating. He said himself that he wants this to be considered seriously, and why shouldn't he? Hes not the usual blithering imbecile who plays 2 or 3 games of GSC and goes "hurr lax is broke this is a shit tier". Jorgen has more than enough experience in GSC to have an educated opinion and I think a lot of people aren't even considering that.

In regards to Royal Flush, I'm all for a suspect test if it comes down to that. It seems like the most straightforward solution, but its also the one I think many other people will instantly deem "a waste of time". before even considering it.

Not sure what else I can say now. I just want to reiterate I have NO opinion as of yet whether he's good for the meta or detrimental, and I plan on gathering as much first hand and second hand opinions as possible.

well i think the laxless minitour should happen regardless. after it's over, if the top gscers've agreed that lax should be tested (kinda doubtful this'll happen but you never know) then if showdown's gsc's not fully functional we can just do it on PO.

Before a relatively poor counter argument is made along the lines of 'if you ban Snorlax then you have nothing to keep Zapdos [or insert whatever the fuck you want here] in check', please take a look at this reply from this topic. It is a debate about stealth rock and how stealth rock supposedly keeps things like Volcarona, Dragonite etc. in check:

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I don't know what Stealth Rock being offensive rather than defensive has to do with GSC Snorlax. But if you're saying that offense only checks offense rather than counters it, then that's kinda irrelevant because CurseLax is inherently defensive - it's first and foremost a special wall.

Although, Snorlax is more analogous to Chansey in RBY than Genesect in BW2 - they are both extremely centralizing forces in their respective generation, and a team is almost better with their inclusion, but they are not broken and have a balancing effect on the metagame.

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RBY Chansey encourages active play, not passive play, because "luring Chansey" is something you actually want to do so you can exploit it, and Chansey's main long-term threat is Ice Beam (which is minimised by dealing with it swiftly). "Luring CurseLax" is rarely desirable - I'd compare it more to RBY ReflectZam in that regard, in that most players' answer to it is to stall it out with walls rather than kill it directly.

all that said, i still don't think we should ban snorlax. on paper it's impossible to handle, but everyone handles it one way or another, and despite the fact that it's on 99.9% of competitive gsc teams it's not like every game is decided by whose lax dies first. hell, stuff like curselax hardly ever sweeps anymore (granted that's because it's overprepared for, but there you have it). the metagame has been set in stone for a very long time, changing it now is unnecessary and further divides what's left of the gsc community. talk about banning lax has been raised time and time again; maybe it's still ou now because people really don't want to see it go.

"i'd love to keep the awful gen 4/5 culture of banning everything strong out of the old gens."

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I understand this point. I wasn't around for GSC's heyday, but I understand this sentiment because older generations are valued for their stability and nostalgia factor. BW seems to foster a "metagame of the week" mentality, at least early on after new releases, which casts doubt on the state of future metagames. But Snorlax isn't just any old ordinary strong thing. It's that one mandatory mon in a metagame that ought to be diverse enough to not have mandatory mons. Even with Electrics left afterward, you'd still be, for the most part, choosing between Zapdos and Raikou.

fat Ultimario said:

"Why split an already microscopic community even further over "true/retro GSC" (w/ Snorlax) and "new GSC" (w/o Snorlax) anyways?"

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I agree, even though a lot of the old-schoolers that would be less receptive of a change are fading away. A split is probably the biggest concern I could have if a big change like this were made. But, I mean, nobody outright stopped playing just because we lifted the Hidden Power Legends ban. Granted, that was a much more minor change, but a Lax ban, I think, is something most GSCers, even if they vehemently disagree with it, could look at and say "I guess it kinda makes sense". But I feel like the potential of people being split because of a potential tiering change is overstated. I mean, at the end of the day, one metagame will become the "main" one, and reasonable players of the fringe metagame will have to play the main one just to get some damn matches (see: rby2k10 and their wrap shenanigans). I'd like to see non-lax be that main one.

fat LN said:

"Is this a joke?

Please tell me this is a joke."

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is not joke ln. It just feels like every reason I've used to justify for Snorlax continuing to exist in GSC just feels like rationalization anymore (outside of "it wouldn't be well-received to ban Snorlax", which isn't a competitive consideration). Do we really know if electrics would become similarly broken in a no-lax environment? Do we really think once Lax goes all bets are off for further changes in GSC? Is Snorlax really the main thing enabling offense in an otherwise "stally" GSC? Maybe, but I doubt these are really as terrible as they're made out to be. We can all agree, though, that Snorlax is the most busted thing in GSC.

Now, this WOULD be a joke if I expected something to come from this post alone. However, I just want people thinking about this as something that could actually happen. Consider it my coming-out post; I'm telling you who I really am, while encouraging people who might otherwise be timid in the face of backlash that it's okay to be gay (for a no-lax GSC meta).

fat kd24 said:

"its funny how much gsc lax reminds me of bw uu lax, yeah its destructive and almost required on every team (is required!), but it does so much good for the meta as well."

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It's interesting that you say Lax is mandatory in BW UU. Surprised it hasn't been nixed yet if that's the case, because that's kind of my definition of a broken mon and one of the few bans I'd probably support in BW! Basically, I dunno if Snorlax really does that much good for the metagame, but I know that it does centralize it a ton, to the point where it's super-hard to keep justifying its existence. Just as Snorlax is the most reliable offensive answer to Electrics and stuff, reliable checks to it are set-dependent and mostly aim to just stall it (I'd say Machamp, Rhydon, and Misdreavus are your best bets at counterplay that don't require blowing something up, but even then they can be worn down on the switch by DE/EQ).

fat Aerodactyl Legend said:

"I remember the last thread. Just checked it and the vote for being OK with him handily crushed the other two choices."

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I posted in that thread. I voted for a ban. I have changed. Also that thread was "are you OK with Snorlax still being around", not "should Snorlax really go away", which colors people's responses differently.

fat BKC said:

"however, i'd like to throw out the idea of a snorlax-less gsc mini-tour."

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I'd love to see it happen. I'd have loved it even without this post, but now, at the very least, I just ask you to entertain the possibility of making non-Lax GSC "real" instead of just "that gimmick tier". Because, really, it's pretty reasonable to think Lax is a ban-worthy mon by competitive reasoning, is it not? I mean, can I really go around saying "Snorlax is the best, you HAVE to use him" and think that's totally an OK thing to continue to allow in OU?

fat meteor64 said:

"The second thing I'd like to bring up is that Jorgen knows GSC better than any of us"

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Heh, well I do know it well, which is why I bothered posting. But saying I know so much more than anybody is probably false; I'm just more vocal about GSC than most because that's pretty much exclusively what I play.

fat Pocket said:

"Another strong point by Lavos - Snorlax may seem uncounterable on paper, but in actual play it is dealt without stretching your team too thin."

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You made some other points but I addressed them elsewhere. While it's definitely "possible" to deal with Lax, good players will always find a way to "deal with" powerful threats. That's what they do. However, the options you have against Snorlax are to stall it, threaten to trade a mon for it with Explosion, or use one of a select few mons (Champ, Rhydon, Misdreavus) that, on paper, have less risky counterplay but, in practice, are underwhelming and still aren't all that reliable. And that's IF it's using a standard set and not just surprising you with Belly Drum or LK or Selfdestruct or whatever, which may not even necessarily be surprises, but rather you can't afford to be wrong about it not being Standard lax. Snorlax is just so high-reward and so ridiculously low-risk that it's hard to justify why something so stupid and easy to win with ought to still be around.

fat Sapientia said:

"Snorlax was temporarly uber in gen2, so it's not like this is a idea of the gen4 players."

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Wow really? Huh. I wonder how that didn't stick but HP Legends did for such a long time :|

fat Joim said:

"Gen2 ladder is coming soon enough to have this kind of threads. I'm working hard on it!"

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Thankye, Joim.

Also I am really sorry for doing a quote-dump style of post, I will avoid it in the future, there were just a good number of comments I was compelled to reply to.